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LORAC PAC Meeting 5 Summary_210602LAKE OSWEGO RECREATION AND AQUATICS CENTER PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE Lake Oswego PAC Meeting #5 Summary Page 1 MEETING 5 SUMMARY Date: June 2, 2021 Time: 6:00 – 8:00pm Place: Zoom Meeting Purpose: Share three design options for center, cost estimates and budget analysis. Outcomes: Update PAC; gather feedback on site options. Attendees PAC Attendees: Lainie Decker Chris Duncan Sarah Ellison Aukai Ferguson Natalie Gentry Sandy Intraversato Cassidy Miller Jahzeel Ormeno John Wallin John Wendland Staff Attendees: Ivan Anderholm, City of Lake Oswego Jenny Anderson, City of Lake Oswego Bruce Powers, City of Lake Oswego Jan Wirtz, City of Lake Oswego Erica Baggen, Scott Edwards Architecture Jennifer Marsicek, Scott Edwards Architecture Sid Scott, Scott Edwards Architecture Andra Zerbe, Scott Edwards Architecture Ken Ballard, Ballard*King Allison Brown, JLA Public Involvement Ariella Frishberg, JLA Public Involvement Welcome and Introductions Allison Brown, JLA Public Involvement, began the meeting. She reviewed Zoom tools and etiquette and reviewed the meeting agenda and purpose. The group reviewed the PAC Meeting 4 Summary. The summary was approved with no additional edits. Presentation: Refined Design Options Jennifer Marsicek, Scott Edwards Architecture, began with a presentation on the designs for three floor plan options. This included reviewing the differences between the three designs and how they meet the goals of the project. These plans can be found on the project website. There were no questions from the PAC about the first two designs. There were several questions about the third design: 2 • An absent PAC member asked “Is adding another swim lane to the rec pool really the best us of the extra square footage? Could we potentially add another feature per survey priorities or PAC feedback?” o The design is conceptual and is meant to reflect the increased water area, not the specific programming that will use that space. The recreation pool shown in the designs is not final. • How did you gain the extra space? o We stretched it toward the high school and a little bit toward the club house. It is a little bit wider in both directions. o We looked at the space between the LORAC and the clubhouse and pushed it to the maximum distance we could go and keep a reasonable space between the buildings. o We also increased the parking lot count to 176 over 163 spots. This is included in the parking study, which also includes the range of the sizes of the buildings. • What is the “Mom’s Room?” o This is essentially a lactation room. It usually has a sink, a lounge chair, and a small fridge. We started including them in plans and now they are actually required by code. Andra Zerbe, Scott Edwards Architecture, presented conceptual images of the proposed designs. These designs are intended as a visual sketch, it should not be viewed as a representation of what the finished center will look like (for example, no decisions have been discussed about what materials will be used for the outside of the building, so the images show blank white walls). Ivan Anderholm, City of Lake Oswego, shared that the large tree shown to the left of the building is a tree that currently exists on site and was included as a point of reference. Bruce Powers, City of Lake Oswego, shared that very little discussion has been had yet about the outdoor spaces, especially from the golf course side. Safety and other concerns will need to be worked out with the golf course landscape architect. Sid Scott, Scott Edwards Architecture, pointed out some additional strategies the design team has been using to maximize program space: • The natatorium is based on a pre-engineered metal building system, which is why it has a pitched roof on it. This is the most efficient roof shape for a pre-engineered building. • The gym and the rest of the building is wood construction, with a shallow-pitched roof on it. These initial images can be viewed in the video from this PAC meeting on the project website. Questions and comments from the PAC included: • Are there any plans or ideas for the layout of the golf course? o There is a preliminary layout, but nothing has been finalized. • Would it be possible to cover the space between the clubhouse and the aquatic center? • Is there access from the outside to one of the multi-purpose event rooms? It seems like this would be useful for summer camps and other programming, so kids don’t have to go through the whole building to get to those. • Is the space between the center and the clubhouse being designed with events in mind, so that it could, for example, be an indoor/outdoor venue? How is this space going to get used? o We are looking at renovating the clubhouse to make it a more programmable space. We are planning to design it as an indoor/outdoor space that is rentable. The discussion earlier today was about how to create an outdoor patio space that could accommodate hourly rentals as well as outdoor programming. • Option 3 looks a lot more promising as a way to give more kids the opportunity to learn to swim. 3 • How wide is the median strip between the road and the pedestrian multi-use path? Right now, it’s fairly wide and provides a nice break. o It is 12 ft walking and 5 ft landscape before you hit the road. It is still about the same size. • It looks like there are a lot of windows near the recreational area – are there going to be windows incorporated near the main pool? Every center I’ve been in feels better the more windows there are. I love how you are incorporating a lot of glass space so you can look through the building and it feels spacious. o A lot of the limitations are based on orientation, sun angle, and the glare on water. We’re limited on where we would put windows near the competition pool because of that, but there’s more flexibility for the recreation pool. We are looking at making the center of the building transparent, so that you drive up and can see all the way through to the golf course. There’s no better marquee for “come on in and play!” then having a big slide in the window. o Glare can be a safety problem and affects lifeguard station orientation. We wouldn’t want floor to ceiling glass, which creates glare and lifeguards can’t see the water. • In Option 2, where the gym is removed, you said that gym area could become an interior space down the road. Is that a viable option? o Yes, we believe that is a potential option down the road if you decide you want to expand the building. If you go with this option, we recommend putting in all the footings along the wall where they would connect if you had a gym so that you could modify down the road. This was included in the cost estimate. Jennifer Marsicek briefly showed the initial layout for the golf course. Bruce Powers highlighted that one of the big changes was moving the stormwater treatment from the aquatic center to the golf course – this is not finalized, but something that is still in discussion with the engineers. • Is there a reason why the putting green isn’t in the center more and move hole 9 down more so you don’t have as many balls going to the left? o It has been discussed with the golf course architect – he is a big advocate for having a larger putting green and feels like the current one we have is too small. Bruce will bring this up with the architect in future conversations. o There will be an open house online for comments on the golf course and PAC members are encouraged to share their thoughts. • Is there going to be conflict over noise between the golfers and the recreation center? o The 9th hole is fairly far removed from where the patios might be, but safety for those outdoor spaces is a consideration. Any patio or usable space is going to require additional conversation about safety. A site tour may be good so you could understand the distance. • Is there a site tour planned for PAC members? o We are happy to do it anytime. We can start arranging that. Presentation: Cost and Operations Sid Scott, SEA, presented a cost summary of the project based on the most current schematic design estimate. The full cost summary can be found on the project website. Questions and comments from this presentation included the following: • Do the “soft costs” for the total budget estimates include building permits or other things the City usually charges for? o These are high level summaries, so the specific fees have not been included. 4 o Ivan Anderholm, City of LO, added that he and Bruce Powers have done some initial estimates for this. There are some fees from the City that would be included and these estimates are close to the numbers they have run. o These are gross figures that we have not done any reductions to. o The biggest costs that have not been included are the underground utility costs. It is a coding requirement to look at underground utilities, but the cost will be high because it is at least 1,000 feet of frontage. Additionally, per PGE the poles will remain because of their high transmission lines. • Is it true that the sight lines of the building would be improved if you removed the franchise lines? o Yes, that is correct, and we are continuing that conversation. • A lot of the optional things look great, of course. I was surprised to see how low the cost is for immediate occupancy. Given that we are trying to make that a 30-year facility, I think that would be money well spent. o Clarified that the immediate occupancy included the gym, but not the pool and locker room spaces. • Does this consider current lumber prices? o We’ve added in 6.5% for inflation each year. It would look absurd if we included everything on wood right now because it went up 300%. But 6.5% on materials is pretty normal for escalation. Ken Ballard, Ballard*King, presented an operations analysis. This analysis estimated expenses, revenues, and fees based on a late 2023 or early 2024 opening date. He noted that the Lake Oswego School District will not pay for pool time, so the aquatics estimates show their usage but not the revenue associated with this usage. He also showed the staffing budget analysis. Questions from both of these presentations included: • Why are you showing fewer hours during the summer and things ending earlier on Saturdays and Sundays? o We have found that even with a recreational pool, usage drops off during the summer, especially later in the day. People tend to be gone over the summer and utilization decreases over the summer. We’re showing the same hours year-round, but we’ve found that most facilities vary their hours seasonally. Hours will be adjusted based on utilization and demand. • For pricing, it looks like the month to month is just the annual fee divided by 12. Why wouldn’t you have the annual fee slightly lower than the monthly fee so we don’t have people who just sign up for 10 months at a time. Additionally, is there an initiation fee? o The month-to-month option puts people on an automatic withdrawal. We want as many people buying passes on that plan as possible. For annual pass holders, we have to get them to come in and re-up. The month-to-month rolls over each month and they have to come in and put something in writing to end it. It provides much more consistent revenue and not having drop-off in membership. o For the month-to-month, you do need to pre-pay for a month. There will be a premium to pay in order to hop on and off, which hopefully dissuades people from doing that unless they’re going to stop membership for a lengthy amount of time. o Public facilities don’t generally do an initiation fee. That’s one of the appeals of a public facility. • Will there be reduced fees for users that are from lower-income households and is that reflected in the budget? o Ordinarily that’s a scholarship program with a sliding scale and we haven’t defined that yet. We will have system that’s an option for people who can’t afford to pay the cost, we just haven’t defined that system yet. 5 o The Parks and Recreation department has a fund for scholarships that funds the amount for the class, so the revenue comes from that fund. We will need to make sure we have enough money in that account to meet the need for the community. But the revenue that comes into the aquatic center for scholarships will be the same amount as a general membership. • How do these numbers compare with the Chehalem Aquatic Center? o We looked at both the Chehalem Aquatic Center and the Conestoga in Tualatin Hills for fee. We didn’t look specifically at the budget in Chehalem. The staffing costs vary enough by region that it wouldn’t have been a helpful comparison. • The initial task force did an operations plan, did this build on that? Especially regarding facilities management, lifeguards and the pool manager? o Yes, we used some of that, but quite a bit of it has changed. It can’t be compared to the existing facility. For example, all usage of this pool will be guarded, while currently very little of the usage is guarded at the LO pool. We are showing guarding for all usage, which is the basic standard of care for the large majority of public aquatic facilities. • It seems like there is an opportunity for resident and non-resident fees, especially since it is close enough to West Linn that we may have a lot of draw from there. o Absolutely. Those are the kinds of things that we will continue to look at as we refine this analysis. o One concern may be a capacity issue. The 25% non-resident fee differential is industry- standard and probably not too much of a deterrent for getting people in the door, while also not going over capacity. Discussion Allison Brown, JLA, asked whether PAC members have initial reactions or reflections about which plan best meets the community’s needs. First, members answered a Zoom poll. One person voted for Option 1, and seven people voted for Option 3. No PAC members voted for Option 2. Highlights from the ensuing discussion: • One of the appealing things about the general area was Club Sport. There is a large membership at Club Sport from the Lake Oswego area. This facility offers a lot of what Club Sport does, but it’s more community centered. I think trying to stay ahead of the eventual over-capacity issues by having higher fees for non-residents is a smart move. • As a member of the Parks Board, every $1million we add to the cost of Option 3 means there will be cuts to the Parks budget for items that we planned for based on the $30million bond. There were a lot of people who voted for the bond for reasons other than the aquatic center. So I don’t know if Option 3 meets the needs of the broader community because of its impacts on other projects within the Parks system. • Option 3 was the most appealing. It has more capacity on both the dry and recreation pool sides. It also has lower annual subsidies, so the impact of the budget over the long-term is better. It feels like the most responsible and sustainable financial choice as well as providing the most options for capacity and programming. • My thoughts haven’t changed. I recognize I’m not on the Parks board, so I don’t have a sense of what we’re giving up. If more money goes to this project, I don’t have a concept of where it is being taken from. But, it makes sense to me to maximize the square footage. Not having a recreation pool is a huge gap in our community and I’m excited about giving more kids the opportunity to learn swimming – for fun and safety, not just for competition. Option 3 seems like it is as small as you’d want that pool. • The recovery rate for revenue for Option 3 seems like it outweighs the additional unbudgeted cost. 6 • Is there a maximum capacity model we could have? Could we limit the number of memberships and figure out the financial options there? If we have more people who want to have a pass than can use it, is there a way to have a cap? I don’t want to have a reputation that there’s no space to swim or in the gym because it’s been overbooked. o It’s unusual for agencies to have a cap on the number of passes that can be sold for residents. The cap can be placed on the number of annual passes to non-residents, which can help limit the utilization. Or, you increase the non-resident annual passes or daily passes. There are different ways to manage that. • Could extended hours potentially mitigate the over-capacity issues? o That can be tough. We’d love to spread people out and not overload the prime times. The problem is facility management. We would need to make sure there is enough utilization to justify the increased cost of guarding/staffing/additional costs for being open at those times. A good facilities manager will adjust cost, hours, staffing based on utilization. o It can help if there is regular after-hours usage (e.g. an adult basketball league comes at 8pm every week), but it gets tough with drop-in hours. Next Steps and Closing Allison thanked the PAC members and project team members for their participation in the meeting. She reminded them about the online open house and encouraged them to share the link with their networks. The details on the next PAC meeting will be circulated via email. There will be an open work session with City Council on June 15th. They will review similar information to what was shared during this meeting, as well as going over the impact of the increased budget on the Parks budget. A similar conversation will happen with the School Board, including making sure the School District’s capital investment purchases the facility they need for their aquatic programs.